Snippets: gRPC, iPython, LLVM, Pi Trees and Juice,

gRPC: Google, doing it’s whomp-here’s-a-“standard” thing, has just announced an open sourced remote procedure call framework called gRPC. With libraries for seven languages (C, C++, Java, Node.js, Python and Ruby are done – ObjC, PHP and C# coming), gRPC gets you to use Protocol Buffers to define the end points and serialisation and the libraries then use HTTP/2 to communicate exploiting the bidirectional streaming and multiplexing. There’s an new alpha of a version 3.0 of Protocol Buffers to go with it too. They may be going evil but they do produce some great engineering so this is one to watch.

iPython 3.0: Interactive shells and books are wonderful things – beyond REPLs, they let people work different with languages and data, moving from a scripted . So it’s good to see the iPython project release a iPython 3.0 and lay down the foundation for language-agnostic notebooks. This is the last monolithic release of iPython, which pulls in a host of different language kernels into the project, including Bash, Haskell, Go and even Redis. But the next stage will be to split the project into a pure Python related stuff called iPython which will also produce a kernel to plug into Jupyter, an interactive notebook environment for multiple languages. Thats a journey that starts with iPython 3.0. If you like the idea of a shell/notebook environment, start following this project as it evolves.

LLVM 3.6 Lands: The new compiler juggernaut that is LLVM rolls through another release as version 3.6 is released. According to the release notes there’s lots of tidying up and updating and quiet adoptions like the Go bindings from gollvm being introduced.

Pi Device Trees: The Raspberry Pi’s Raspbian release that arrived the the Pi 2 also came with the added bonus of switching to Device Trees which is a way of modelling and talking to the bazillion different hardware combos out there in a unified way. The Beaglebone Black’s Debian has had it for ages and now it’s the Pi’s turn. There’s a whole load of things to get your head around but this posting on the Pi forums will get you through enabling I2C, I2S, SPI and more using DT.

PiJuice: Talking Pi, there’s a nifty Hat-sized Kickstarter for a device called a PiJuice currently running which lashes a standard phone battery, real time clock and UPS and other handy things into a £24 hat so you can take out Pi walkies. It’s also pinned so you can pop another Hat on top. Looks very clean as a design.